Low-Income Parents Worry More About Student Harm

Story Highlights

Income a major factor in parental worries about physical harm at school

Education, gender, race and ethnicity also related to level of concern

Overall levels of concern have varied little over past decade

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Low-income parents in the United States are more than twice as likely (32%) as high-income parents (14%) to worry frequently that their children will be physically harmed at school. Parental concern also differs significantly by race, ethnicity, education and gender.

Parental Worries About a Child Being Harmed at School, by Subgroups

"How often do you, yourself, worry about having a school-aged child physically harmed attending school -- frequently, occasionally, rarely or never?"

Frequently

Occasionally

Rarely/Never

%

%

%

All parents with children under the age of 18

22

27

50

Annual household income

Less than $30,000

32

21

45

$30,000-$74,999

27

26

47

$75,000 and above

14

30

56

Education

College degree

13

31

56

No college degree

28

24

48

Gender

Men

17

25

57

Women

27

29

44

Age

18-34

27

26

46

35-54

20

27

53

Race/Ethnicity

Non-Hispanic white

18

29

53

Non-Hispanic black

37

19

44

Hispanic

29

23

48

Gallup polls from 2009-2018, asked of parents of children under the age of 18

GALLUP

Gallup has asked parents of children under the age of 18 nine times in the last decade, "How often do you, yourself worry about having a school-aged child physically harmed attending school?" Combining the results for the 10-year period highlights the significant differences within American society.

In addition to the wide gap between low-income and high-income parents, the percentage of blacks who frequently worry (37%) is almost 20 percentage points higher than among whites (18%), and parents without a college degree are more than twice as likely to worry frequently (28%) as parents with a degree (12%).

Parents' worry about their children being physically harmed at school is one of 13 crime fears measured in Gallup's annual crime survey. For parents of children under the age of 18, the percentage frequently worrying about their child being physically harmed at school is higher than for all other crimes listed except identity theft and having personal, credit card or financial information stolen.

Low-income parents are almost as likely to worry about their children being harmed at school as they are about identity theft and theft of financial or personal information, while high-income parents show a much larger gap between concerns about school violence and concerns about the white-collar crimes of identity theft and theft of information. For more affluent parents, worries about children being hurt at school fall into the same lower-priority category as property crimes such as burglary and car theft, which are much more of a concern among lower-income parents.

Worry About Crimes in High-Income and Low-Income Households

Percentage who worry frequently about each of the following things

Annual household income

% Less than $30,000

% $75,000 and above

Child physically harmed at school

32

14

Credit card or financial information stolen

38

44

Identity theft

34

34

Burglary of home while not there

31

11

Car stolen or broken into

24

12

Gallup polls from 2009-2018, asked of parents of children under the age of 18

GALLUP

Bottom Line

Much attention has been paid to mass shootings at American schools in recent years, with the Parkland, Florida, shooting in February sparking gun-control campaigns that stayed in the news for several months. But while those shootings, which mostly happened at middle-class suburban and small-town locations, grabbed the headlines, the highest level of concern among parents over the past decade about their children being harmed at school can be found at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale.

Among those lower-income and less-educated parents, fears for their children's physical safety may be less related to the isolated instances of mass shootings than to everyday bullying and assaults. As policymakers wrestle with the problems of how to protect all schools from deadly attacks, their priorities should also include the daily safety of students in predominantly low-income schools, whose parents may not have the financial and political resources needed to mount an effective campaign for their children's physical well-being at school.

Results for this report are based on aggregated results from nine Gallup polls conducted from 2009 to 2018. Telephone interviews were conducted with random samples of 2,018 parents of children under the age of 18, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample, the margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on subgroups included in this report, the margin of sampling error ranges from ±4 to ±7 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.